SUSAN SWARTZ: Let us break baguettes together

Thank goodness Condi and George have made nice with the French, because we were so needing their counsel. Not in the matter of whom next to attack, but how to look as good as their women.

This is diplomatic progress. A year ago Americans were still making stupid jokes about Freedom Fries, and now we want to sit at the same table and watch them eat, having gone gaga for a best-seller called "French Women Don't Get Fat."

I couldn't wait to buy it. I'm a sucker for most things French, although I do maintain a California sensibility toward goose liver. Sitting down with the book and a bagel and cream cheese, I decided I had to either stop reading or stop eating. French women don't read while eating. French women don't eat cheese that comes in a tub.

French women never have seconds. They take only three bites of dessert. French women don't go to the gym. They are as happy with legumes as they are with a bonbon.

Mon Dieu!

Curiously, French women find diet talk boring. French-born author Mireille Guiliano, who lives in America, knows her adopted countrywomen are just the opposite and adore talking about diets.

She's right. American women can spend an entire lunch obsessing about what we should be eating. We can count off the decades by diet crazes. I remember one that had to do with whipped cream. And a no-carb one that succeeded but made me so depressed from pasta deprivation, I didn't care if my jeans fit or not.

What makes this French diet book a big seller is more than the few recipes for chicken au champagne and the like and maintenance tips that we already know -- drink lots of water, walking is the best exercise. And it's not the writing. If you want words to swoon over, reread MFK Fisher.

I think the big draw here is that the author is a stylish French woman, and while Americans may consider the French "tres snob" (among other failings), we suspect they have it all over us in panache.

They even eat pretty. You do not see French people sitting along the boulevard talking with their mouths full, ketchup dripping onto their sweatpants.

Yet, how often do they share their secrets? Ask a French woman how she ties her scarf, and she shrugs as if to say one is simply born knowing. Indeed, one learns that the French woman's way is as much about presentation as intake.

Of course, French women get fat, just like we do. But they have their way. I have a photo from St. Remy of a farm woman of sturdy proportions. She's carrying a basket of wash, and she's elegant in her apron and espadrilles.

Caitlin and Albert Woodbury of Santa Rosa live part of every year in the Dordogne area of France, where they have a bed-and-breakfast inn. They need to understand crucial French and American differences. Given a complimentary bottle of wine, American guests drink it up, Cait reports. French guests don't know what to do with a lone bottle because they don't drink wine without food.

Over there, the Woodburys eat the French way. No grazing. No bags of chips. More importantly, no skipping lunch, eating in the car, on the street or hanging over the computer. Dinner is soup or an omelet, says Cait, whose French weight is pounds less than her American average.

Maybe you have to live there to get it. The rest of us are slow learners. The recipe for goat cheese and tomatoes looks fine. But with a burger -- ooh, la, la.

Susan Swartz is a staff columnist for The Press Democrat in Santa Rosa, Calif. Contact her at sswartz@pressdemocrat.com.)